VJ’s Fat Experience: Part 1 of the Fat Experience Project

The Fat Experience Project was started by Stacy Bias, an illustrator who is seeking to tell the stories of people around the world who have had to deal with the negative connotations of being overweight.

For many, body issues and the way we view ourselves are shaped from an early age, whether it be from our parents, our doctors, or our peers who can often say cruel things. Their words stick with you for the rest of your life, no matter how hard you may try to forget. Because of this, many people develop eating disorders and have an unhealthy relationship with food; the spectrum can go from anorexia to binging.

The story of VJ is one such story, where the words of supposed caretakers resulted in VJ being sent off to an inpatient facility to manage her weight, lest her mother lose the government assistance that her family lived on.

VJ narrates a story from her childhood, explaining what she learned about life when her loving mother was forced, at risk of losing the public assistance she required, to send VJ away at 10 years old to an inpatient facility based on negative assumptions about her size.

Everyone has their own issues with body image regardless of their size. I can still remember the time when my mother told me I was too chubby to be in beauty pageants. I was five years old. That single moment has impacted the way that I view myself for as long as I can remember; only in recent years have I essentially come to love myself as an individual, though I do still have moments of insecurity. Just last year, a man at a bar told me I was fat and lazy for not giving my seat up to him (yeah, I know…wtf, right?). Of course, that man was punched in the face by my friend sitting next to me, but despite the instant karma, I can still hear the words echo in my head.

It’ll be interesting to watch the direction that the Fat Experience Project will head. It’s cathartic to hear the stories that other people share and comforting to know it’s a struggle that you’re not alone in. In a society that continues to shame individuals who don’t fit into a norm, the Fat Experience Project may be a reprieve for those looking for an understanding place to fit in.

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About The Author

Nona Raybern
Nona writes things called words and puts them into sentences that are supposed to make sense, but sometimes don't. Writing this bio would be one of those times where it don't. She also likes grammer and speeling. And bourbon. And OH MY GOD, IS THAT A CUPCAKE?

Branovices

I dunno, there is a line somewhere between promoting healthy self image and promoting poor lifestyle choices. Sometimes genes are actually to blame, and it’s possible that someone that seems to be overweight is actually quite healthy, but this is rather rare. Usually it is the case that being overweight is a reliable, and obvious, visual indicator that the person is not eating healthy or getting enough exercise. Especially in children.

Unfortunately it is the poorest citizens that often have the worst of it. If you work multiple job or are a single parent you may not have time to cook nor the money to buy healthy foods. The obsession with “organic” foods and anti-genetically modified foods is also driving up the cost of things like fresh vegetables. Cheap, processed foods become the go-to for feeding the family and that can create life-long problems.

It’s a complicated issue, is what I’m saying… but I don’t think making the doctor out to be a villain, and then confusingly calling him fat (which is okay because he’s mean?), is the way to go about it.

Ruminum

I think you also have to look at food consumption in the complex way it is treated in society. Eating is emotional. We are taught to associate food with comfort, family, indulgence, feeling healthy, feeling smart, feeling happy, feeling sexy, feeling rich, feeling loved, etc. That’s why diet foods are marketed as being “just as good/sinful/delicious/indulgent” but “without the guilt”, rather than being marketed as healthy and enjoyable. Telling people they can’t eat certain foods is also telling them that they need to avoid the feelings associated with them. But unless that person is taught or figures out how to derive those same feelings in other ways that are as readily or easily accessible as food can be, it’s going to be a hard sell.

And addictions are partially due to the chemical addiction, but the emotional addiction is much harder to break. Foods are addictive in these ways (and some would also argue chemically, too), so you have to look at it from the perspective and complexity of addiction. Why does someone eat this food/smoke this cigarette/drink this alcohol, even if they know it’s not good for them? Is it a control issue? Maybe they eat foods they know are unhealthy because they feel that it’s one of the few ways they can be happy if everything else in their life makes them unhappy.

There are a ton of reasons, and it’s unfortunate that we live within this kind of eating culture (Food Network, Bone Appetite Magazine, holiday feasts, as examples), but refuse to view the issue of unhealthy eating within that framework and merely as a simple behavioral issue.

slab

Two things:
-I used to think like you do, that fat people are that way for simple reasons – too much food and not enough exercise. But then a little TV show called “Survivor” came on. After 39 days, the fit and healthy people were walking skeletons and the chubby people were still chubby. Were the chubby people getting food on the sly? If anything, the fit people were getting more food because they were winning challenges. Lean vs chubby is a lot more complicated than too much food and too little exercise.
-They weren’t calling the doctor a villain. They were calling him a hypocrite.

Ruminum

…I’ll share one:

I was a chubby kid starting in the third grade. One time, when I was in the fifth grade, it was my grandparent’s 50th anniversary. We held a huge banquet ceremony with many guests, and I was put in charge of the children’s table, where all the kids of our many guests sat together. My family instructed me to order whatever the kids at the table wanted–more soda, rice, etc. I was the responsible as the head of the table. As the night progressed, we ran out of rice for the dishes being served, and I asked a passing waiter (one of many) if he could bring us more of it, after he had dropped off several bowls at another table. He stopped briefly and looked at me and said, “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” and walked away.

Two of my friends were sitting next to me and tried to make me feel better, though I didn’t initially understand what he meant. It hit me after a few minutes, and I felt so at odds: I was excited to be helping my family while we celebrated this big event for my grandparents with our friends and family, and I had been given this big responsibility. And suddenly, I felt so ashamed, and additionally worse because then my friends (with good intentions) began to patronize me and try to make me feel better. But I knew I was fat. I would be stupid if I didn’t know that already. What could they possibly say to make me feel “not fat” in that situation? One of the happiest and proudest nights of my life in my best clothes, and I felt ugly and ashamed of myself.

And on top of that, I no longer felt alright ordering anything else for the table. I felt that the next waiter would likewise view me as a fat kid greedily ordering more food, when all I was trying to do was order food for myself and the 15 kids sitting with me, who were my responsibility. A friend of mine sensed I was uncomfortable and she took over for me, which was a relief.

I only mentioned what happened afterward, the next day as my family and I talked about the party and how much fun it was (and it was, this was just a weird thing that happened that I didn’t know how to feel about). My aunt, who organized the entire event, was furious and called the restaurant owner (who was a family acquaintance) to complain, but even them making a big deal of it didn’t make it better. It just meant that I, this fat kid, had whined that this guy had made a comment about me being fat, and that he would now get in trouble because I was fat.

When I think about the issues I’ve had with my weight, I occasionally think about that. Even a complete stranger felt at liberty to make me feel bad about my weight, on a celebratory night surrounded by my family and friends, when initially, I couldn’t be happier. Where exactly couldn’t it happen? Who wasn’t thinking that when they saw/met me?

I consider myself to still be an overweight person, and there really isn’t a time in at least 15 years where I felt like I was satisfied with my weight, or a day when I haven’t had it on my mind. Despite not being one for sports, I ended up doing a lot of high-energy athletics as I was growing up–swimming, diving, fencing, dancing, so I know that at some points in my life, I’d been driving myself crazy with exercise. There were even times when I knew I lost a lot of weight, where my parents were worried and thought I was sick, but I still always thought I could stand to lose more (and I eventually gained weight again later, anyway). I never saw myself as skinny during those times, though when I see pictures of it, I can see it now. Even recently, I bumped into someone I hadn’t seen in a while and the first thing they said was that I had lost a lot of weight, but I had felt I was going in the reverse direction. It makes me wonder if I was really heavy the last time I saw them, or if I can’t see my weight loss, like I couldn’t in other times. ::shrug::

tl;dr

I was a fat kid. Even complete strangers would say stuff to me about my weight. I still think about those experiences and wonder if it’s affected how I view myself even today.